Farmer King Country
March 2025
High... and dry By Chris Gardner
When you can see the mountains it’s going to rain, when you can’t see the mountains, it’s raining. “It’s going to rain,” says Mat Sherriff hopefully. From high on his wife’s family’s drought stricken Rotomate sheep and beef farm, a short drive from Piopio town, Sherriff can see across the Central Plateau to the mountains at Tongariro National Park and down the coast to Mount Taranaki. It’s a crystal-clear day, without a cloud in the sky. The sun is shining, the temperatures are in the mid-twenties, and Rotomate hasn’t had any rain to speak off since before Christmas. “This is excessively dry,” Sherriff said. “My biggest problem is water.” One of Sherriff’s principal water sources on the 350ha block he leases across the road is drying up. All up, Sherriff and his dentist wife Kim Tatham, runs an 1150ha farm, 870ha of it effective with the test as retired bush. “It’s not looking too good,” he said. “Last week I was panicking quite a bit about the water, but we have made a few plans since then,” he said. “We have dug a new hole, created a new stock water pond, and got new pumps and pipe to fill another pond who’s level has dropped about one metre.” It’s cost the farm about $15,000, but it has given Sherriff more certainty in less certain times. “We feel like we are pretty lucky when we drive around the country.” He’s a regular visitor to the Waipā district, where he has family and Hamilton city, where his children attend school. Max, 15, is at St Paul’s Collegiate, while Zoe, 13, is at Waikato Diocesan School for Girls. He has seen far drier conditions to the north. “We are getting a share of grass, we are pretty good at managing that,” he said.
Rotomate sheep and beef farmer Mat Sherriff says pond levels have dropped about one metre on his farm.
Sherriff, who has been farming Rotomate since 2012, having moved from Taupō, is planning to introduce breakfeeding with silage, allowing livestock a small area to graze each day. Other farmers used to describe the King Country as summer safe, farming parlance for guaranteed enough rain in the summer to grow good crops and livestock, but this sentiment is a thing of the past. “We have had more dry summers than we have had wet summers,” he said. “Last year was the second driest summer in 30 years.” In 2024 the farm received 1733 millimetres of rain compared to 1650 millimetres in 2005 – it usually receives about two metres. “Stock manager Darren McNabb came up from Cheviot so is used to the dry,” Sherriff said.
“He spent all last year telling me how wet it was.” Regardless of McNabb’s views, it’s all about pivoting to being better prepared for ongoing dry conditions in the summers. “We feel like we are getting the hang of managing them. “Our stock is in really good condition,” Sherriff said. Instead of finishing cattle at 550kg, they are being finished about one month early at 500kg. Sherriff and Tatham also run a corporate retreat on the farm, and up to 12 guests stay at a time in quarters once used to home Sir Peter Jackson’s cast and crew filming The Hobbit. Parts of the farm appear in a few seconds long sequence about three quarters of an hour into the first film: An Unexpected Journey.
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